David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I have some material here that pertains to anticircumvention. It is long and I am happy to share it with the Senate, but I appreciate time is precious and I do not want to spend long moments trailing over issues that are of no assistance to you. Let me as a minimum at least say this. In developing the anticircumvention inquiry system, Customs and Border Protection consulted extensively with all members of the government's recently established International Trade Remedies Forum and it also considered models from other jurisdictions as well as the ongoing debates occurring within and between WTO members. A fundamental element of this framework is the exclusion of activities which are generally considered to be compliance issues or, in other words, breaches of customs legislation. There are already existing powers to deal with these breaches.

Anticircumvention inquiries focus on activities which are beyond the traditional reach of our compliance activities and I think go to your example, although we will of course have to take the specifics of your example on notice. But, of those activities, there are four types of circumvention meeting the following important criteria: they are relevant to Australia and Australian industry; they are relevant internationally—that is, they have also been targeted by other jurisdictions' anticircumvention models; and there is a high degree of confidence that they could be identified, investigated and addressed within the allocated 155 days. Additionally, the bill introduces a power to make regulations which will proscribe additional circumvention activities, should that be warranted.